helper, the "Softy "—in the semi-darkness of whose soul there is said to have been some glimmer of that light which was altogether wanting in Mr. James Conyers; for Steeve Hargraves, on his way to the Hall, "felt that these things were beautiful," the flickering shadows of the evergreens on the grass; the song of a skylark too lazy to soar, and content to warble among the bushes; the rippling sound of a tiny waterfall far away in the wood,—“made a language of which he only understood a few straggling syllables here and there, but which was not altogether a meaningless jargon to him, as it was to the trainer; to whose mind Holborn-hill would have conveyed as much of the sublime as the untrodden pathways of the Jungfrau." If the "Softy" had more than a little of the Caliban about him, Caliban's susceptibility to island beauties-witness his descriptive lines in the Tempest-may be in a measure included. But the trainer, except for his Antinous face, is a Peter Bell. He belongs to the people stigmatised by Dr. Boyd as utterly unimpressionable by the influences of fine scenery; who live perhaps for long years where Nature has done her best with wood and rock and river, but in whom, on the closest acquaintance, one cannot discover the faintest trace of the mightily powerful touch (as it would be to many) which has been unceasingly laid upon them through all that time. 66 Miss Ferrier rightly says of two of the characters in her Highland story, that certainly Glenroy and Benbowie did not seem in character with the scenery, as they were borne along on the bosom of the blue waters," which reflected the magnificent panorama of hills. But Glenroy and Benbowie cared for none of these things-though the woods and waters, hills and dales, suggested ideas to them, such as they were, as they sailed along. "The crystal depths of the limpid waters, over which the sun was shedding its noonday effulgence, suggested to their minds images of herrings, fat, fresh, or salted, with their accompaniments of cask, nets, and busses; the mountains in their stern glory, with their lights and shadows and lonely recesses, to them showed forth heathburning, sheep-walks, black-faced wedders, and wool.' So when these Arcades ambo touch the shore of Inch Orran, they break into no idle raptures about the water-plants, the fern, the wild flowers, the tall foxglove, the grey rocks and bright mossy stones, half hid beneath the broadleafed coltsfoot, that form the rich and variegated foreground; "for they were casting searching looks for 'black tang,' and 'yellow tang,' and 'bell wrack,' and 'jagged wrack,' and such other ingredients as enter into the composition of that valuable commodity called kelp.” Probably neither of that dual number would greatly have objected to join in the candid confession ascribed by Mrs. Southey to One who says plainly-"I confess to me Your model Manchester man, as depicted by that clerical essayist on Fraser's staff who styles himself "A Manchester Man," is one who, "like Peter Bell, sees things as they are." If he examined the coat in which Nelson died at Trafalgar, he would wonder (Mr. Lamb goes on to say) whether it were of West of England or Bradford manufacture. Of the Duke's despatch-box he would say, that it was worth so much as "old materials." If told of the marvels of Aladdin's lamp, he would inquire whether it were gilt or bronzed. “If he saw the mummy of Potiphar's wife, he would pronounce oracularly that the wrapper was flax, not cotton." Of Goethe at Strasburg, in 1770, his biographer well says that to him pictures meant something; they were realities to him, because he had the true artistic nature; whereas "to the French architects, as to the Strasburg officials, pictures were pictures-ornaments betokening more or less luxury and taste, flattering the eye, but never touching the soul." In another place, Goethe's biographer, incidentally criticising Lessing and his tendency to realism, observes that the author of the "Laokoon" loved a beautiful landscape, but, German though he was, never felt any of the soft sadness and mystic witchery felt by moderns; that he looked on Nature as a Greek looked on her, seeing nothing behind the panorama. Referring later again to Goethe's study of anatomy, and the delight with which he declared how legible the book of Nature was becoming to him, Mr. Lewes remarks by the way, "But there are minds, and these form the majority, to whom dry bones are dry bones, and nothing more." His own genial researches in science have been of a kind to acquit him of the charge, or rather to secure him against its ever being made. XVIII. About Ejurria and Gombroon: GLIMPSES OF DAY-DREAMLAND. Α 1 Ta very early period of the childhood of Hartley Coleridge, he imagined himself to foresee a time when, as his brother tells us, a small cataract would burst forth in the field next his-or rather his uncle Southey's-house; the stream thus created would soon have its banks thickly peopled; a region, a realm would arise; and the result would be an island-continent, to be called Ejuxria, with its own attendant isles—a new Australia, the history and geography of which were at one time as familiar, to say the least, to Hartley's younger brother and affectionate biographer, Mr. Derwent Coleridge, as any portion (he had almost, in his faith in Ejuxria, written it "any other portion ") of the habitable globe. The details have gradually faded from the survivor's memory, and fitly enough, as he says, no written record remains (though an elaborate map of the country was once in existence), from which they can be recovered. The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath, And these are of them. Whither have they vanished ?— As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd! Taken as whole, the Ejuxrian world—this is Mr. Derwent Coleridge's account of it-presented a complete analogon to the world of fact, so far as it was known to Hartley, complete in all its parts; furnishing a theatre and scene of action, with dramatis personæ, and suitable machinery, in which, day after day, for the space of long years, he went on evolving the complicated drama of existence. "There were many nations, continental and insular, each with its separate history. civil, ecclesiastical, and literary, its forms of religion and government, and specific national character." The names of Ejuxrian generals and statesmen were familiar in the biographer's ear as household words. He witnessed the jar of faction in his brother's realm, and had to trace the course of sedition. He lived to see changes of government, a great progress of public opinion, and a new order of things. For Ejuxria, though a cloudland, was not merely a land of passing clouds; though a dreamland, it was not compact of dreams that are gone in a night. To the brothers, one of whom had created, and both of whom believed in it, it was for a large space of their childhood a continuing city. When at length, however, a sense of unreality was forced upon Hartley, and he "felt himself obliged to account for his knowledge of, and connection with, this distant land," like Mahomet and other self-asserting seers, he resorted to a preternatural medium, or consecrated agency, and got up a story, "borrowed from the Arabian Nights," of a great bird, by which he was transported to and fro. "But he recurred to the explanations with great reluctance, and got rid of them as quickly as possible." His brother once asked him how it was that his absence on these occasions was not observed; but Hartley was angry and mortified, and the sceptic never repeated the experiment. Hardly a sceptic, either; for by |